Content area
Full Text
Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, Niall Ferguson (Ed.), Penguin Books, 201 1, pp.440, Rs. 499
Niall Ferguson is a British historian who specializes in financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as increasingly the history of colonialism (Wikipedia). Ferguson has of late made a career out of writing creative counter factual history also known as Virtual History. It is best understood as the "What If...." school of writing history.
Since Niall Ferguson has championed the cause of counterfactual history so doggedly through his career, and been the soul behind the production of this book, it is instructive to look into his background and current preoccupations. Ferguson, was born in Glasgow, UK and is presently the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University as well as a senior research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and a senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has published extensively - 8 books and many journalistic and research papers and has made 5 BBC Films. During the 2008 U.S. Presidential election Ferguson advised the Republican, Senator John McCain's campaign. (The Wikipedia entry for Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson, gives a lot of information on Ferguson's professional and personal life.)
In the years since the book first came out in 1997 and it's publishing by Penguin this year, Ferguson has become somewhat of a celebrity historian. So far as I have been able to find out that this book has been previously reviewed only by Aviezer Tucker when it was first published. I have tried to find the review by Tucker but it is published in the journal History & Theory which was not accessible for the purpose of this review. Going by Tucker's publishing on the subject of historiography, however one can conclude that it was not a sympathetic review.
Coming back to Virtual History, the book under review. In a lengthy introduction, Niall Ferguson defines two ways Counterfactual or 'Virtual' History can be approached or written - " those which are essentially the products of imagination but (generally) lack an empirical basis; and those designed to test hypostheses by (supposedly) empirical means, which eschew imagination in favour of computation..." He goes on to add that "the book is in essence,...